


Devil Child

by asparagusmama



Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: Crack Treated Seriously, Elements taken from Hairspray the Musical (2007), Episode Related, F/F, Gender or Sex Swap, Life Born of Fire, Missing Scene, Shoes and Musicals, Very seriously, there maybe a musical number
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-03
Updated: 2019-08-03
Packaged: 2020-07-30 13:44:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20098165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asparagusmama/pseuds/asparagusmama
Summary: Another Life Born of Fire fic - but with a different spin!Lady Hugh has a daughter, Penny. In this missing scene, before the police arrive at the Master's Lodge of Mayfield College, her daughter's girlfriend, Seaweed, is attempting a rescue!You don't have to be familiar with the musical to read and understand this





	Devil Child

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BabyKlingon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BabyKlingon/gifts).

> From a late night fun discussion with my daughter eons ago, and as I am trying to write something every day I am well enough.

PC Josh Kavanagh was called out to a disturbance at Mayfield College’s Master’s Lodge, set half a mile from the college on Radcliffe Square, on the banks of the Cherwell on Angel Meadow, overlooking its cricket ground. He pulled up on his bike and then walked through the alley, listening to the birds and ducks, you could hardly hear the traffic from St Clements at all. He was aware from the chatter on the radio that there had been a body found at the college a few hours previously, and had requested back-up and had been told Crime Search, Forensics, Tech Team, and CID were on route, but this was flagged as a separate standard breach of the peace, something a young probationer like him could handle alone.

A short, plump, middle aged, white man in a bowler and suit approached him, looking flustered. 

“She won’t go, she just swore at me! This is the fourth time she has tried to break in and the eighth time I’ve moved her on in three days!” he blustered, flapping his arms in panic.

“Lead on!”

He heard her before he saw her, a woman shrieking, “Penny! Penny! Are you in there? I’m going to get you out! Hold on!”

She was black, long green braid extensions ending in a darker green beads, flying and rattling about her face and neck and back as she shook the barred window frame, her white trainered feet balanced precariously on a large flower pot. She was dressed in green cargoes and a white spaghetti strapped vest top, and wore no jewellery but the gold hoops in her ears.

“Miss, calm down,” he began. “Can you please get down miss.”

The young woman turned and glared at the porter. “You called the filth?”

“I said I would. Lady Hugh said you are not to be admitted.” the porter yelled, attempting to asserting himself. 

“She’s locked her in! Don’t you care!” the young woman screamed.

“Miss. Miss, can you get down. What’s this about a person locked up?” Josh asked, slightly worried she was speaking the truth. She certainly believed it, if she wasn’t telling the truth this would be a mental health shout, and he hated those.

“Crap!” the woman yelled, as lights and sirens could be heard, and vehicle after vehicle began bumping down the cobbled, narrow, road from the approach off Bath Street, at an angle to the small alley Josh had entered by. His bike was now blocking that entrance, not that you would get two transit vans down it. 

Josh was quick, and grabbed her, and as he had hold of her bodily, made an arrest as he had no choice. “I am arresting you for a breach of the peace and an attempted burglary. You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in Court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence. Now tell me your name Miss.”

She flopped in his grip as all the fight went out of her at the shock of being arrested. Josh struggled for a moment with her sudden dead weight, before he maintained a grip on her shoulder, but she seemed to show no intention of running again.

“Seaweed,” she replied.

“That isn’t a name, now, is it?” Josh asked gently, confused.

“Take it up with my Mum. I’m Seaweed J. Stubbs. What is this, the calvary?” she asked, as officers were climbing out of the Search and Forensics vans. A silver Vauxhall Astra had pulled up behind the vans, and DI Lewis was walking through the vans and officers, the tall and graceful beauty (to young PC Josh Kavanagh) that was DS Hathaway was following.

“Right, let me and the sarge have a look-see first, then it’s all yours guys,” Lewis was saying, then stopped, taking in the white, uniformed officer holding the angry, still panting with exertion, young black woman, and the gloating, triumphant looking white Porter. “What’s happening here?”

Before Josh had a charge to answer, the porter began angrily, “Trespass. And break in, and general nuisance! I told her I would call the police!” he paused, “I didn’t expect this response though!” the porter blustered, tripping over his words! “Lady Hugh said she was not to be admitted!”

Lewis looked at the man in confusion, glanced at Josh and Seaweed, and sighed heavily, rubbing his eye, looked at the porter with passive annoyance. “I’ll come to you in a minute, Sir.” He turned to Josh, “Well, Constable?”

“Was called out to a disturbance, a breech of the peace, and found this woman attempting to break in,” Josh replied, still holding onto Seaweed, still afraid she would bolt. “I heard what happened at Mayfield and was told I didn’t need back up and you were on route, Sir. I made an arrest, as she attempted to run as soon as she saw your lights. However, Sir, she claims someone is being held captive inside.”

Lewis’ face showed his concerned. “Would that be Penny Hugh? I understood she was in London, at the LSE?”

“Yes!” Seaweed cried, “Yes! She came home to talk to her Mum about us and never came back! She texted me four days ago to say her Mum needed to pray for her, to save her, to...”

Lewis held out his hand. “Wait, are you and Penny in a relationship?”

Seaweed nodded, and the relief of someone listening, made her weep. “Please...” she pleaded, her big brown eyes looking straight into Lewis’ worried ones, biting her lip to stop herself crying more.

“I have the key here, we’ll go in. And release her, constable,” he turned to Seaweed and smiled, "Your arrest is a figment of his imagination.” He nodded to Josh, to show no hard feelings, he knew he had had no choice as she had tried to do a runner, but he was calling it now. He then turned back to the vans. “James!” he beckoned his sergeant over, who held the front door key, and was approaching, curiosity burning in his eyes.

“Now, you can’t do this, what would Lady Hugh say?” the porter demanded, puffing his ridiculous chest out.

“Not a lot I should imagine,” Hathaway replied dryly. “She’s dead. Murdered. It’s why we're here!”

Beautiful but a bit tactless then. Josh caught the old porter as his knees buckled with shock and sat him on the flowerpot, then left him to follow the CID officers and the young women. There were enough officers to take care of him if he fainted.

In the building, the officers and Seaweed ran from room to room, floor to floor, calling Penny’s name. Suddenly another officer was yelling from the door,

“Sir! Sarge! Porter says there’s a basement!” 

Josh found the door, and it was locked, so rushed out while Hathaway was giving it heavy, hard, angry kicks, and returned with another officer and the big red key, and between them they got the door smashed open. Seaweed pushed past and rushed down the stairs. Lewis snapped on the light and followed, Josh and Hathaway following.

There was another door, and old wooden one, but that was merely bolted on the outside. In the room were stacks of tins, bottles water, a chemical toilet and a small bed. On the bed a skinny young white woman with blonde hair in bunches dressed in a seen-better-days checked red dress. She was tied to the bed and gagged. Seaweed was releasing her and murmuring reassurances of love and kissing her before any of the officers could stop her.

“Do we really have to find her murderer, Sir?” quipped Hathaway in his boss’ ear.

“Sadly,” Lewis replied flatly.

Meanwhile, Seaweed was holding Penny tightly, brushing her hair from her face, and singing a lullaby to her to keep her calm, she had been locked up for days, gagged since her mother had left for the college many hours before, and soon, in a croaky voice, Penny was joining in, as if it were their own private musical,

Living in the ghetto  
Black is everywhere ya go  
Who'd have thought I'd love a girl  
Whose skin was white as winter snow  
In my ivory tower  
Life was just a Hostess snack  
But now I've tasted chocolate  
And I'm never going back

'Cause without love...  


Lewis smiled in confusion and turned to Hathaway, “Well, what was it you were saying to me in the car the other day?” he asked with a smile. Hathaway, to Josh’s confusion, flushed pink across his cheeks. Private joke, he guessed.

*

Later, in the kitchen, over tea Josh was tasked with making, the CID officers broke the news gently to Penny about her mother’s murder.

“Is it horrible of me to say I’m relieved?” Penny asked, squeezing her girlfriend’s hand.

She told her story, that for the last seven years not only had her mother never accepted her daughter could be a lesbian, she had forced her to attend ‘the Garden’ from the age of 14 at her mother’s college and follow this perverted stations of the cross, like a distorted twelve-step programme, that was designed as a gay-conversion therapy, breaking down the self for a new, sinless, heterosexual, version to emerge, like a phoenix rises from the ashes, a life born of fire. In the end, four years on, in the upper sixth, applying to universities, she had pretended it had worked. But she had just graduated and wanted to give her Mum one last chance, so had come home to introduce her to Seaweed and to collect the rest of her things – she was moving in with Seaweed at her Mum’s house in Peckham until they found jobs and could afford something of their own. She said she couldn’t even repeat the things her mother said, breaking off into fresh sobs.

“I ain’t heard half of them but I know the rest, if you get me?” Seaweed said. “Words that made my Mum cry herself to sleep, words said to her as a Midwife after she came over from Trinidad to work for the NHS, words said to not let her touch them or in her house, vile, nasty, words about the colour of her skin, you get me?”

“She said I was doubly sick!” Penny said, burying her face in Seaweed’s chest and crying.

Underneath his handsome poker face, Hathaway looked like he wanted to punch someone. He walked out.

Lewis patted Penny’s hand, then put Seaweed’s over it, as he watched his moody sergeant depart. “We’ll need you to identify the body, I’m afraid. And we need to search the house and your mother’s computer for all references to The Garden. We sent a Met officer to find you in Camden. Are you both able to stay, we can get a Family Liaison Officer to put you up in a hotel, the two of you, while we need your help. I think you can be most helpful with my building up a case, as they have pushed at least one person to suicide with this evil ‘conversion’. Can’t change what a person is.” He looked quite sick. Josh was used to casual homophobia with most officers of that age and gender, so could quite love the DI himself for such unexpected anger and support. “Don’t worry,” Lewis went on to the women’s aghast faces, “we’ll pay.”

Just then Josh’s radio went and he had to leave to a call out to a domestic on Iffley Road and so he didn’t get to observe any more. He watched Hathaway watch him put on his helmet and leathers and climb back on his bike though, so the day had a bright side.

**Author's Note:**

> Hairspray: the Musical (2007) own copyright for above quoted lyrics by Shaun Stanley and Victoria Elizabeth Akpewrene. Having been made aware of the AO3 rules on song lyrics, I have cut the quoted lyrics to a bare minimum that keeps it making sense - if you want to hear it for yourself, Google Hairspray, 'Without Love', to find a licenced performed version. It is actually 3 songs in one, with 3 couples singing over one another, I had tried to cut out only Penny and Seaweed's many verse and chorus, but apparently that was still too much.
> 
> Josh is from the fic I wrote a few years ago for a LiveJournal Lewis Challenge, 'What's Love Got To Do With It' here  
https://archiveofourown.org/works/3354488/chapters/7338533


End file.
